The next day, Min-jun went up to the roof.
The rooftop door was at the end of the fourth-floor hallway—a plain metal slab with peeling green paint. The ajumma had said it was locked, but when Min-jun pushed it during the day, it yielded easily.
The roof was small and cluttered. Old satellite dishes, rusted ventilation pipes, a few faded plastic chairs. Someone's laundry was drying on a line—a pair of jeans and a bleached-out t-shirt hanging lifelessly in the wind.
Min-jun walked the perimeter. An ordinary roof of an ordinary old building in an ordinary district of Seoul. Nothing strange.
Almost nothing.
In the far corner, tucked behind a rusted water tank, stood a door.
Just a door. Old wood, with flaking brown paint. It was built into the wall of the tank—no, not built in. It looked as if it were growing out of it. It felt wrong. The wooden frame merged directly into the metal, looking like someone had carved the door out of one reality and pasted it into another.
A sign hung on the door. Tin, faded by time.
502
Min-jun stopped two steps away.
His heart was hammering, though he didn't understand why. It was just a door. An old door on a roof. Perhaps there had been another floor here once that was torn down, and the door was all that remained. Things like that happened in old buildings.
He reached out. Touched the handle.
The metal was warm.
And in that moment, even though it was two in the afternoon and the sun was shining, he heard it again.
The crying.
Soft, barely audible. But it was coming from right there. From behind the door.
Min-jun yanked his hand back.
He turned around, retreated to his room, locked the door, and sat on his mattress.
His hands were shaking.
He lasted two more days.
Two nights of waking up at 3:17 AM to the sound of weeping. Two nights of lying with his eyes wide open, listening, trying to convince himself it was a hallucination. Sleep deprivation. Stress. The fallout of burnout—his therapist had mentioned that such things could happen.
But on the third night, he broke.
3:17 AM. The crying.
Min-jun got up, threw on a hoodie, and grabbed his phone. He went up to the roof.
The door was still there. Of course it was.
He approached it. Placed his palm against the wood. It was warm, almost hot. Like something alive.
"This is a stupid idea," he said aloud. His voice sounded brittle on the empty roof. "This is the single stupidest idea of your life, Lee Min-jun."
But he took the handle anyway.
He turned it.
The door opened.
Behind the door was a hallway.
Long, narrow, covered in faded floral wallpaper—the kind people used back in the eighties. The ceiling lights cast a dim, sickly yellow glow, and half of them were flickering.
Min-jun stood on the threshold, staring in.
It was impossible. He was on the roof. The roof was the top level of the building. Behind the door, there should be... nothing. Just air. Maybe a fire escape. But not a hallway.
Yet the hallway was there.
Min-jun took a step forward. Then another. He looked back—the door behind him was still open, and through it, he could see the roof and the night sky of Seoul, lit by a million distant lights.
Fine. He could still go back.
He walked down the corridor.
Wooden doors lined both sides, marked with numbers. 501. 502. 503. Further down, the hallway turned a corner, and Min-jun couldn't see how many more doors lay beyond.
The crying was coming from 502.
Min-jun stopped in front of it. Listened.
A woman's voice. Low, monotonous. A sob-less weeping that sounded almost like a song.
He raised his hand. Knocked.
The crying stopped instantly.
Silence.
Then, a voice: "Come in."
The room was small. Square, maybe three meters by three. It was empty, save for a suitcase in the corner and a woman sitting next to it on the floor.
She was about twenty-five, maybe thirty. Black shoulder-length hair, a simple t-shirt, and jeans. She was folding clothes into the suitcase—neatly, methodically. She folded a sweater, then unfolded it again. Folded it once more.
Min-jun froze in the doorway.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I heard... Were you crying?"
The woman looked up at him. Her face was calm, almost devoid of emotion. But her cheeks were wet.
"No," she said. "I'm packing."
She picked up the same sweater again. Folded it. Placed it in the suitcase.
Min-jun took a step into the room. "Where are you going?"
"To America." Her voice was flat. "I got a scholarship. Berkeley. Chemistry. I always wanted to study chemistry."
She pulled the sweater back out of the suitcase. Unfolded it. Started folding it again.
"That's... great," Min-jun said cautiously. "Berkeley is a brilliant university."
"Yes."
"And when do you fly out?"
The woman went still. The sweater froze in her hands, half-folded.
"Tomorrow," she said quietly. "A nine a.m. flight. I need to finish packing."
Min-jun looked around. The room was hollow. No furniture, no personal effects. Just the suitcase and the clothes inside—the same sweater she kept folding and unfolding, over and over.
"How long have you been packing?" he asked.
The woman didn't answer. She just continued with the sweater. Her fingers moved automatically, mechanically.
Min-jun crouched down beside her. "Hey. Can you hear me?"
"My mother got sick," the woman said suddenly. "Yesterday evening. A high fever. The doctors don't know what it is. She's alone. My father died three years ago. She's alone, and I..."
Her voice wavered.
"I can't leave her. I have to stay. Until she gets better."
"But the flight is tomorrow morning."
"I'll postpone it." The woman shook her head. "I'll ask the university to wait a semester. Or a year. They'll understand. It's my mother. They have to understand."